Dancing Non–Traditionally
by Meatball42
Summary: When Ianto asks after one of Jack's stories, he gets an anthology. Five people/aliens Jack slept with whose gender identities can only be explained with complicated flowcharts.


Title: Dancing Non-Traditionally

Rating: R for explicit alien sex. (That's right, I went there)

Author's Note: Written for the communities queer-fest and fivetimesbb on LiveJournal from a prompt on lgbtfest.

Art: crescent_gaia created an intruiging and beautiful fanmix for this story, not to mention so very squee-worthy cover-art, which can be found at crescentfanfic dot live journal dot com slash 9682 dot html, pardon the ugly link.

[*]

"...so we ended up at her place afterwards, and she was understandably grateful that I'd stopped her from getting run over. Then it turned out she wasn't a she, but with as many suckers as ze had on zir phalanges, who's gonna complain about pronouns?"

The team was split between staring at him in shock and laughing shamelessly. Jack grinned with the memory and took a huge bite out of his teriyaki.

"Come off it, Harkness," Owen complained after catching his breath, throwing down his chopsticks, "none of us believe you."

Gwen snorted into her Chinese carton and Tosh smiled, looking unsure but entertained. Jack laughed, leaning back in his chair.

"Everything I tell you is the truth, Owen." Gwen nearly choked on her food. Jack gave her a little glare, which just made her chortle more. "It's not my fault that you haven't been exposed to the wide variety of beings in the universe."

"I've gotta think about my health before I expose myself to the kind of 'beings' you talk about," Owen shot back. The girls tittered and Jack unsuccessfully tried to suppress the smile that was forming. On the other side of the conference table, Ianto shook his head.

Gwen's phone went off with a descending sequence that the entire team could recognize. She glanced down at the screen, muttered an apologetic 'Rhys' to the table and grabbed her coat from the back of the chair. "I'll see you all tomorrow!" she called as she hurried out the door.

Jack checked his watch and nodded goodnight to Toshiko as the tech followed Gwen's lead out the door. Owen gave Jack a mildly disgusted look on his way out, to which Jack responded with a good-natured growl.

Ianto walked around the table, piling together the food cartons and chopsticks and napkins and throwing them all away before going back for the mugs. Once those were put on his serving tray, he sat in Toshiko's abandoned seat beside Jack.

"You are telling the truth, aren't you?" he asked, brow slightly furrowed.

Jack, who had been lost in a reminiscence about suckers, looked up in surprise. "Huh?"

"I mean, all those stories. All those aliens. They are real, aren't they?" Ianto didn't meet Jack's eyes.

The captain laughed, a slow, truly amused sound. "Oh, Ianto Jones, the stories I could tell you."

"Please do," invited Ianto.

For the second time in as many minutes, Jack raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"I'm curious," Ianto continued. "About the pronouns... and such. It sounds interesting."

"Ahh." Jack nodded, rubbing his chin as he considered. "There are some pretty interesting creatures out there."

"And you've been exposed to them all." Ianto smirked slightly. Jack laughed again. "Will you tell me?"

Jack checked his watch. "That would take longer than we have tonight. I have paperwork to complete, or my General Support Officer gets tetchy with me."

"We can't have that." Ianto tapped his fingers on the glass table, considering. "Tell me five of the most unusually pronoun-ed beings you've encountered."

Jack leaned back in the chair until it groaned. "I'm never going to get to that paperwork," he concluded.

Strangely, he didn't sound that disappointed.

[*]

Yussuff shifted on the low bench so he could finish taping the latex to Herippa's injured wrist. She'd fallen on it when he'd pushed her out of the way of an oncoming hover vehicle, but it was only a sprain. Two of her four hands were clenching her own seating bench so that she wouldn't move, while the third was holding the tape dispenser steady for Yussuff.

He finished fixing the pressure cuff in place and slipped a finger between it and her slick blue skin, making sure it wouldn't cut off the flow of the nutrient liquid through her veins. She hissed at the sting, forked tongue vibrating between blue lips, but Yussuff smiled. "Perfect," he told the attractive alien, flashing her a charming grin.

She looked at him gratefully. "Thank you so much," she told him, the snakelike, whispery sizzle of her voice sending a shiver down his spine. "If you hadn't pulled me out of the way of that skimmer, I'd be dead right now."

He shrugged. "It's what anyone would have done."

Herippa slipped a phalange under his chin. A clump of the hundreds of tiny suckers that grabbed moisture from the air for her system fixed themselves to his skin and forced him to look her in her blue, beady eyes. "I should thank you."

"You don't have to," Yussuff answered, but his voice was already husky, his pants tight.

Herippa stood up and shimmied. The wide violet sarong her people wore slipped to the ground as silent as the mist, and Yussuff's breath flew out of his lungs. Herippa's body was sinewy and dense, befitting the higher gravity her species contended with, and every move looked like she was dancing through the air. As he took in the view he realized Herippa wasn't female, but the rare third sex of the species. His grin widened: he'd never slept with one of them before.

Zir skin was a deep blue and moisture collected thinly, making it shine like a gemstone. One of zir arms stayed where it was, on his chin, but the others moved to ruffle his hair, smooth down his chest to his groin and to stimulate the lactation buds on zir own chest.

"I don't have to," ze said sultrily, acknowledging his comment, "but since we're already here."

"Oh yes," Yussuff breathed. He dropped to his knees in front of the alien and blew out gently over zir front orifice. Ze trembled and two of zir arms zipped down his topsuit. Yussuff shook it off and began gently brushing his lips over the wet, sensitive outer skin of the orifice. Herippa spread zir legs to give him more room, leaning back against the table on which Yussuff had left the medical supplies. One of zir legs trailed up Yussuff's inner thigh to the bulge in his pants that represented his very attentive cock.

"Gods," he gasped in response to the pressure. He made quick work of his pants and dropped them to the floor. As he leaned back to Herippa's orifice, which had begun to pulsate and excrete zir juices, the probing foot curled around his cock and the suckers slid wetly along his heated flesh. Yussuff's moan was echoed by Herippa as the vibrations went straight from his mouth to zir core.

"More," ze urged. He grinned against zir skin and focused on the sweet taste of zir hole, reaching up to caress zir lactation nubs. He scraped his teeth carefully over the rim and flicked his tongue in deep, listening to zir gasps.

"Up!" ze whined breathlessly. Yussuff pulled back, giving zir a confused, sticky expression. One of zir dark phalanges grabbed his hand off zir chest and guided one of his fingers inside zir hole, where he felt a roughed stretch of skin. He rubbed it cautiously and ze bucked against him, clenching and moaning in a way he recognized. He redoubled his efforts and was rewarded with the foot on his cock moving faster and sucking harder.

All too soon, the suckers on zir phalanges had Yussuff groaning deeply into zir hole as he came. The vibrations, along with the sudden liquid against zir suckers, pushed Herippa over the edge and ze climaxed explosively. The citrus-tasting juice of zir front orifice spurted onto his face, accompanied by semen oozing from the suckers of every phalange, getting in Yussuff's hair, clothes and all over his skin.

They took several moments to collect themselves before Yussuff stood up. He leaned against Herippa and kissed zir, moaning in renewed arousal as zir forked tongue danced along the roof of his mouth, licking up traces of zir come.

"I trust my gratitude has been received?" Herippa smiled cheekily when they parted, eyes inviting him for another round. Yussuff grinned. "Just call me a good Samaritan."

[*]

The wind howling across the empty plains and the swirling gray clouds ahead looked like home to Donner. Back on the Boeshane they were close enough to the planetary pole that during the distant part of the second orbit his settlement often received icy rains and thunderstorms. Donner much preferred the warm rainstorms of the 745-day-long summer, but mild gray storm clouds that hid thunder behind them were almost enough to relax him.

Not quite enough, however.

Donner checked his Vortex Manipulator for the hundredth time since the training party had disappeared from his scanners. He knew his instructors well enough to guess that this was probably a test. Still, there was a slight chance that something had actually happened to the other members of his team, and he needed to get back to base on the other side of the moon. Unfortunately, the storm was creating some sort of spatio-temporal interference that blocked his Manipulator and Donner realized he had more problems than a broken wriststrap. If he didn't find a way to a secured settlement, he could get sucked into a timestorm.

A gust of staticky wind set all his hair to standing on end, and Donner spun around, blaster already aimed and charged at the creature who had snuck up behind him. It was a blob of color.

"Who are you?" Donner called over the wind.

The blob hung in the air a few meters away. It was about twice the size of his head and glowed green, just a few shades lighter than the grass beneath Donner's feet. It didn't speak, didn't communicate on a public telepathic channel, didn't attempt any form of gesturing communication. It did bob, a little, on the wind, but even a strong gust only fluttered it slightly.

"What do you want?" Donner asked it.

A thin tendril of the creature's body slipped off of it and stretched toward Donner across the distance between them.

The Time Agency taught all its trainees to think for themselves. It knew that even its own databanks were not large enough to encompass large tracts of information on all the beings and cultures on the universe and throughout time- nor did any of their agents have enough time to learn it all- so it took an almost fatalistic stance on the matter. If an agent's instincts kept them alive, excellent, sign on the dotted line. If an agent died, then obviously, the Time Agency wasn't the right job for them.

Donner did not want to die, but he did not want to kill an innocent being. He remained still and allowed the tendril to brush the skin of his cheek, not even noticing that static electricity that began sparking through his hair at the touch.

Instantly, Donner understood. The creature was not made of light or plasma, it was made of thought. While Donner stumbled over the new knowledge, the creature's casual invasion of his mind ended. It sparked to him its name, a jumble of lights and glass with an accompanying popping noise, and immediately noticed that this was not an acceptable language to Donner's processing capabilities. After a split second's deliberation and a brush through Donner's mind, it chose the name Andromeda, one of Donner's old girlfriends, as pleasing.

"Alright then Andromeda," Donner gasped, body shaking from the cold of the wind. "What do you want?" She sparked that she wanted to touch him. He was quite flattered to learn that his mode of being was admirable to her and that she was to see more of him.

Donner smiled despite his chattering teeth. "I'd love to, but could we move to some place warmer?"

Andromeda sparked and ascertained his situation. In an instant, her mind glowed a brighter green and warmth spread through Donner's body.

He scowled. "There's no need to laugh at me. That's how my species procreates."

There were a few more crackling giggles, then her body floated closer to him, seemingly unaffected by the wind, which had begun gusting. Several more tendrils flowed out of her body and touched places on his skull that Donner recognized as telepathic contact points.

A bit uneasy, he chuckled. "Just so you know, my body can't handle too much electricity. I might explode. I've seen that happen, it's not pretty."

She gave him a zap that he almost would have described as admonishing, then focused on him. She slipped inside his skull, pressing herself against his telepathic receptors, and hummed.

Donner gasped at the sensation. It felt like an electric current was being run through warm, sentient liquid that was bubbling around his mind like a Jacuzzi. Andromeda focused more and the liquid feeling seeped through his brain, lighting up nerve receptors like a mega-city.

He tried to spark back at her, questioning, but he failed utterly and instead she created images inside his head to explain. 3-D holo-images of his own memories flashed past him on fast forward, harvested from his memory and sorted out. He could feel the naïve bliss of being with Gray, his parents and friends on Boeshane. The crazy, adrenaline-bursting adventures after he left his home planet. Week-long orgies with the best drugs in three galaxies as a time agent, along with the pride and hope when he managed to do good in the universe.

All the best times of his life bubbled to the surface of his brain for Andromeda's selection, the memories over-loading him. Donner felt a stupid, dreamy grin spread over his face behind the onslaught, his knees weakening. Andromeda's influence kept him on his feet, but he felt as weak as over-cooked seaweed.

She focused on what he'd mentioned before, his species' method of reproduction. Feeling a bit gleeful at the opportunity for payback, Donner recalled hundreds of sexual experiences, and began to white out as the sense-memory from all of them was magnified and reproduced in his nervous system.

…

Andromeda was chuckling. That was the only explanation he could come up with for the pattern of sparks on his sore telepathic points when Donner woke up, lying on his back on the green grass.

"What's so funny?" he mumbled. His lips were numb.

She sparked him a few choice memories that she'd found inside him and he realized, with an indignant squawk, that she was laughing at the connection between his masculinity and his dual reproductive system. Donner thought she was calling him some derogatory double-sexed name before he understood she was just amused at the construct.

Having satisfied her curiosity, Andromeda sparked that she was ready, pulling back her tendrils.

"Ready for what?" He noticed that she was suddenly glowing a lot brighter, her colors shifting between dark green and light green. "Are you okay?"

With a flash of electricity so bright that he was left with spots in his vision, Andromeda burst. Once Donner managed to blink away the shadows, he was horrified to see four little bundles of light blue mind bouncing around on the wind.

"Andromeda!" he shouted. The being hovered up from the ground and a tendril brushed his cheek again.

She sparked that she had copied some of his thought processes for her young. She hadn't sparked this to him before because she had seen that his culture had different ideas about biological relatives as hers and she sparked to him that the offspring were not his responsibility. She buzzed a little at the unique attributes the young had already picked up from him- they had received his concept of masculinity despite two of them being queens. Donner was a bit angry that she had lied about her intent to reproduce, but she sparked him more information on her culture and he understood why she had done it.

With a last spark of thanks, Andromeda reached a filament to his Vortex Manipulator and gave it a large, visible zap. When he frantically checked it the capabilities for spatio-temporal jumps had been put back online.

"Thank-" He looked around him. Andromeda, his two masculine/child-bearing offspring and two entirely new gender offspring had vanished.

[*]

It was one of those things that you would think was funny if it hadn't happened to you.

"Help! Help!"

Donner clapped his hands over his ears to block out the piercing, extremely high-pitched screams of the man he had been enjoying a thorough shag with just a few moments before. He tried to scramble to his feet- difficult when your pants are still wrapped around your knees- and shouted to his bed-mate in one of the common languages.

"What are you doing?"

The alien, humanoid except for the rust-red skin and the pincers extruding from the flanks, continued screaming. Before Donner could make another move the door to the bedroom burst open and three beings of the same species burst in, uniforms proclaiming them to be security for the space station. They grabbed Donner by the arms and legs, pushing him back down to the floor and cuffing his limbs together.

Donner knew struggling wouldn't get him anywhere and waited patiently until he was seated in an interrogation room with a finely suited orange-tinged bug woman, apparently some higher authority. First she read him his rights- a very long process in this particular galactic quadrant- and then sat down.

"Do you understand the charges against you?" she clicked to him, pincers straightening her suit.

"I have no idea why I'm here," Donner said earnestly. "We left the station bar together, check the tapes. It was entirely consensual."

"Maybe it was then," the lady clicked, eye sockets narrowing. "But what about later?"

"I didn't drug him or force him, if that's what you mean."

"How dare you!" a voice shouted unexpectedly from behind Donner. He turned around in surprise and discovered that the back wall of the room had been removed silently at some point and in its place was a huge plane of translucent electro-plastic. In the next room, glaring at Donner and seething with rage, was the red alien he'd pulled earlier that evening.

"How dare you call me 'him'!"

Donner looked back at his interrogator, but she was clicking disapprovingly. "What did I do wrong, exactly?"

"Before the fourteenth hour, the station was in the sun-phase of Zargüten the Terrible," the lady explained. "But once the station's orbit crossed the sun's sixth parallel, the plaintiff became a male. As of that point, any sexual contact between the two of you was expressly forbidden."

"Wait, became a male?" Donner repeated in disbelief. "What was h- sorry, what were you before," he directed behind him.

"I was a male-bodied neuter," the red alien sniffed haughtily.

"How was I supposed to know any of this?" Donner shouted. "I've never been to this station before!"

"It's very simple," the orange lady said scornfully, slapping an electronic reader onto the table in front of him. The page pulled up was a sun chart in three dimensions with a revolving graphic of the space station and its path. Donner tapped the blinking area and the screen zoomed in four thousand percent to explain how the sixth parallel affected male-bodied neuters. Donner stared, head shaking from side to side unconsciously.

"It's not my fault you couldn't finish before we crossed the parallel," his shag- who Donner decided then and there was a complete prat- taunted.

Donner rubbed his forehead, wondering why these things always seemed to happen to him. "I want a lawyer."

[*]

The first time they had sex, the Doctor didn't come. Jack took it a little better than Rose did.

"Do you just- not- uh," she stuttered.

The Doctor took pity on her and answered. "Nope." He sat up against the headboard of the large bed the Tardis had provided them.

"Do you need to go again?" Jack had watched the others during the last round and was more than ready for his second turn.

The Doctor snorted. "That's not the problem, although now that you mention it..." and the conversation was postponed for several loud, sweaty minutes.

When the Doctor still hadn't come, Rose began to look concerned. "Are you in pain, Doctor?" she asked, giving his still-erect cock a look that seemed to imply it was about to explode (and not in the way Jack had in mind).

"Nope," the Doctor said with his usual cheery grin. "Totally alright."

Rose was blushing furiously, so Jack took over. "Is this a Time Lord thing, then? You not finishing?"

"Oh, I'm finished," the Doctor continued to grin. Jack knew what he was up to. He'd just sit there, daring one of them to ask, until they gave in. It was a battle of wills. Jack simply smiled in return and rolled onto his back, sighing and letting the afterglow of a really great orgasm wash through his body.

Rose, it seemed, could not resist. "But, you," she gestured. Jack rolled his eyes where they couldn't see him.

At Rose's gasp, he turned his head- and gaped for a moment himself. Before his eyes, the Doctor's erection was quickly wilting until it was impossible to tell he'd been aroused. "A party trick," the Doctor said, looking delighted at the expression of utter shock on his lovers' faces. "Time Lords can manipulate our body chemistry at will."

Jack huffed in admiration, thinking of all the times that would have been a great ability to have.

"So, you weren't really... attracted to us, then?" Rose couldn't seem to decide whether she wanted to look at the Doctor or absolutely anywhere else. She pulled the sheets closer around her body.

The Doctor blinked, his grin fading. Jack felt a moment of sympathy, overshadowed by gratitude that he wasn't the one who'd upset Rose.

"Of course I am," the Doctor grumbled, looking almost insulted. "You think I'd be here if I wasn't?"

"Maybe for a party trick," Rose shot back, eyes shining. Jack read the signs of a defensive Rose and a defensive Doctor and figured he'd save them all from a few awkward days on the Tardis.

"Okay, down girl," he interjected, attempting to sooth Rose. "I think he proved pretty well a while ago that he's attracted to us." He brushed his fingers over a trail of bruises the Doctor had left on the side of her neck, and she blushed.

"And Doctor." Jack turned his attention to the surly alien on whose knees he was reclining. The Doctor glared back as though he expected Jack to challenge his motives as well. "I think Rose and I both want you to have just as amazing a time with us as we just had. If you don't climax, what else can we do to make you feel good?"

This softened the Doctor's expression. "There's nothing else you need to do, lad. Neither of you," he directed to Rose as well.

"But why don't you come?" Rose asked. Thankfully, she seemed merely curious now instead of hurt.

The Doctor sighed. "It's complicated."

"We've got all night, although eventually I do want to get back to our previous activities," Jack winked.

"As a Time Lord, I have more than one level of what humans call attraction. I have several senses you couldn't even comprehend." The Doctor clammed up. The look that came over his face was familiar from any time he spoke about his race.

Rose shifted up beside him so that she could lie beside him. Jack mirrored the movement so that they were all touching, together. "I think we need to hear about this, Doctor," Rose said quietly.

The Doctor considered for a long time before he nodded.

"Physically, it's easy for me to dance. It's all biological. As far as who I'm attracted to, brilliant, daring, lovely people seem to be the trend for this life," he said, looking slightly embarrassed.

As rare as it was that the Doctor ever spoke about his feelings, both Rose and Jack couldn't help but hug him. The Doctor clutched his Companions close to him, and when they let go they sat closer than ever.

"I told you both about regeneration. When Time Lords would pair-bond, they had to be ready for the changes regeneration would bring. Sometimes their lover would change sex, and some couldn't handle that. But what mattered was the psychic connection. The telepathic bond is what would make me climax, but there's no one left alive who could do that for me."

The Doctor was staring at the Tardis wall as he spoke. Jack saw the silent tears on Rose's cheeks and reached out to wipe them off.

"The regeneration's physical changes are nothing compared to the mental change. It's like suddenly having a different person inside your head. They're essentially the same, but it feels like a complete stranger. And if you don't fit anymore, then," he sighed. "There's nothing for it. Most times, the lover would leave, rather than be confronted with what they'd lost. Our evolution hadn't found a way around it."

"Well that's stupid," Rose blurted out. Her voice was thick, like she needed to blow her nose, but she ignored it. "Leavin' someone you love just because you can't come anymore, I can't believe that. 's not like women come all the time as it is, or even most of, if you listen to my mates back in London."

The Doctor nearly broke a smile at that. "It's a bit more than just that, Rose."

"I don't care. I'll never leave you just cause you changed," she declared stubbornly. "I told you, you're stuck with me, and I guess we're lucky I'm not telepathic, 'cause there's no way I'm changin' my mind."

"Same here," Jack said quietly.

The Doctor looked between them both. The loss and sadness didn't disappear from his face, but they faded significantly as he spoke. "I'm so lucky to have found the two of you."

"And don't you forget it," Jack smiled.

[*]

Jack was getting their beers when the social worker approached their table, so he got back just in time to stop his boyfriend from inflicting grievous bodily harm.

"And stay the hell away!" Eddy shouted after the fleeing man. He sat down at their table angrily, the black mini-skirt riding up on his thigh. Jack's eyes were attracted like magnets to the stretch of skin, not to mention the lycra over Eddy's C-cups, but it wasn't the time.

"And what'd he do to you?" Jack chuckled, setting their pints on the table and sitting down across from the pale-skinned Londoner. He took the other man's hand and threaded their fingers together. That hand tightened around his as Eddy raged.

"I can't stand those people, comin' down here and givin' us their _pity_ and their _condolences_. He wanted to apologize about Abe," Eddy said, sounding, for a moment, like a lost child.

Jack sighed at the thought of their good friend, who had died less than a month ago of AIDS. "How did he find out?"

Eddy took a swallow from his pint, leaving a mark of cherry lip gloss, and frowned at Jack. "Everyone knows. It's huge. Rumor's been it's just an American disease, nobody here's gonna catch it. Stupid, but no one wanted to admit they're scared. They can't ignore it now."

Nodding, Jack took a sip of his beer. His knowledge of this time in history was sketchy, since he'd always paid more attention to the mid-twenty-first century. Plus, working for Torchwood meant he didn't have much time to watch the news. Trying to salvage the evening, he steered the conversation to safer waters, asking about Eddy's shift at the high-class drag club where he sang.

An hour or two later, when they were walking through the district on the way to Eddy's flat- Jack had been granted a weekend not on-call from Torchwood for good behavior- he noticed that Eddy was looking pensive.

"Still thinking about Abe?" he asked sympathetically.

"What? Oh, no." Eddy flicked the long black hair of his wig over one shoulder, scarlet nails glinting in the streetlights. "It's that social worker. Got me a bit ticked off."

"If it's not Abe, what else did he do?"

"Gave me a bunch of condoms," Eddy frowned.

Jack laughed. "It's not like we aren't gonna use 'em," he pointed out. "They the good kind?"

"I don't know, I wouldn't take them," the shorter man admitted. "He called me transsexual. I told him I ain't no fag like that."

Jack blinked. He'd spent nearly a century in this era and the vernacular still tripped him up. If it wasn't cheesy, it was sick, and if it wasn't sick it was fag. Did that mean a cigarette yet?

"Just 'cause I wear clothes like this, don't mean I'm a woman. I get paid for this, I get good money!" Eddy stabbed the air in emphasis. "I'm all man!" he shouted, attracting a few wolf whistles and a scattering of applause from the people in the area.

Jack chuckled. "You tell 'em Eddy."

There they crossed out of the district and quieted. Eddy didn't live too far away, but the flat wasn't in the buffer zone of safety around the queer area. They kept on the lookout.

"You don't… mind, do you?" Eddy broke the silence after a few minutes.

"Mind what?"

"That I work at the club, that I wear these half the time." He gestured at the convincingly padded bra, highlighted by the cut of his tight shirt. "That I... like wearing them. I mean, you said you didn't, but I doubt tits and a dick look very attractive together in this particular situation."

Frowning, Jack took a glance around the deserted street and pulled his boyfriend into an alley. He pushed Eddy up against one of the brick walls and palmed one of the tits in question, pressing his body against the other man's until Eddy squirmed. The padding was thick, not as supple as a woman's breast would be, but the hard line pressing against Jack's thigh was one hundred percent natural.

"You want to know if I mind?" he rasped, knowing the tone of his voice would excite Eddy as much as his words. "One of my favorite things about fucking you is seeing these bouncing as I make you shout. Or when you're riding me and your head's thrown back, and sweat's trailing between them and I just have to lick right up-"

He was cut off by a pair of lips crashing into his. They wrestled for a moment before Eddy broke it off. "I guess I know what we're doing tonight," he grinned, and slipped away from the wall.

Jack watched the mini-skirt flapping as Eddy tried to run in his heels. He licked his lips, relishing the cherry lip gloss, and took off at a sprint.

[*]

Jack took deep breaths, trying to slow the pounding of his heart as he lay flat on his sweat-soaked sheets. He heard a quiet laugh and opened his eyes.

Ianto held himself up with one hand on his cheek, elbow in the pillow next to Jack. He smirked at Jack with lips that were stained red along with part of his chin and cheeks. "Did I wear you out?"

Jack chuckled, still breathing hard. "Since when do you keep cherry lip gloss in the Hub?"

Ianto's grin widened. "Always at the ready."

Jack rolled his eyes, then closed them again, enjoying the post-coital exhaustion and warmth that seeped through his muscles. He felt Ianto moving, making the mattress shake, and then Ianto's heat settled beside him and a sheet was laid over their bodies.

They lied there long enough for Jack to become drowsy as he listened to Ianto's even breaths. The size of the bed meant their sides were pressed together and Ianto had rested his chin on Jack's shoulder. When he spoke softly a few minutes later, Jack could hear him clearly.

"After all those experiences, all that diversity, how can you stand to live in twenty-first century Cardiff?" Ianto sounded quietly amazed. Jack turned his head and Ianto shifted so they wouldn't go cross-eyed.

"When I first got here, I hated being stuck on Earth, away from everything I've always known. It was tough to get used to not seeing blue people or aliens with multiple eyes, without hearing all the languages I was used to," Jack recalled. "But I have met so many people in this time, so many incredible people. I don't regret that."

Ianto frowned. "Don't you feel like you're settling for… for Cardiff, when you could have so much more?" Jack's eyes narrowed and Ianto couldn't hold the gaze. He looked down at his own hand, softly stroking Jack's side. "I mean, you could be out there, right now, having adventures and shagging your way through the universe," he smiled.

Jack pulled Ianto's chin up with one finger until blue-gray eyes met his. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be, and you know why? Because this is the only place you are. And you're just as unique as anyone in my stories."

He didn't move until Ianto's cheeks had flushed thoroughly, then smiled gently. "And honestly, who else would have cherry lip gloss on hand?"

Ianto's red mouth curved up and he shifted forward to meet Jack's waiting lips.


End file.
